Be A Flip Flopper

Hey Trendliticians! Were you for the war before you were against the war? Are you looking for snug shoes that reflect the same comfort you feel with your political stance? Well then we here at Trendliest recommend investing in a pair of flip flops.

Originally known as “thongs,” but changed to the more erudite “flip flop” after a successful trademark infringement lawsuit filed by pint-sized R&B singer Sisqo who was riding high on his 2000 hit “Thong Song,” flip flops are an easy-breezy way to ensure the bottom of your feet avoid getting dirty, while still allowing them to be vulnerable to shards of glass, so that you may one day also file a frivolous lawsuit against the owner of the property where your foot laceration occurred (hopefully it’s city property).

Prevented Use of The Term Thonger

Aside offering limited covering and defense for your toes, flip flops are largely associated with being an ideal footwear option when dealing with the “heat.” This caused quite a misunderstanding during the 2004 elections, when many Republicans repeatedly accused then Democratic candidate John Kerry of being a flip flopper. For some reason many voters took this to mean Kerry was being charged with being indecisive, when it actually meant that he would have been an easy, breezy fit if he were employed to take the heat of the office of the President of The United States of America. Whether or not he would be able to protect it from shards of glass would remain to be seen.

Kerry: Easy. Breezy. Didn’t Necessarily Protect Against Shards of Glass

Luckily, this small misunderstanding has been cleared up, and with the weather hotter than ever and the 2008 election heating up…the people have spoken. And you know what they’re saying? “Flip Flops are friendly and trendy,” also “Yes we Can!”

Go Floral On Their Asses!

Hey Trendwipers! Do you use plain ol’ white TP when it’s time to do a number two? We here at Trendliest know that marshmallow hued two-ply can be such a snooze. Are you looking to spruce up your poop up? Well if transforming your throne area into a botanical garden sounds at all appealing, there’s no trendlier way to do so then by investing in some floral print toilet tissue.

Rather than be tethered to your toilet with the latest copy of Fine Gardening, floral print paper brings those lovely lillies to the lavatory or those charming carnations to the comfort of your can, without having to utilize that bidet as a flowerpot. While you may not fancy the smell of roses you can take comfort in knowing that these will eventually smell like poo poo. Perhaps the trendliest part about using these sunflower strewn squares is that rather than feel as if you’re using some processed product from a paper mill, each azalea adorned area harkens back to a simpler time when human beings tidied their down there area by brushing leaves and other assorted plant parts against their backside. Yes, floral print toilet tissue certainly brings us back to our roots even if those roots are printed with ink.

Hurricane You

Hey there trend-chasers! Have you been driving your beat up Dodge truck chasing the latest weather trends only to stumble on an unfriendly tornado that lacks the common decency to introduce itself before it destroys your house and parks your ATV in a tree on the other side of town? The nerve! We here at Trendliest recommend you drop that zero and get with this hero: Hurricanes! Because the latest friendly weather trend is forking over the cash so that you can name these super storms.

Naming Hurricanes is a rather recent phenomenon. After the success of the Star Registry’s efforts to charge people to name stars in the sky, The National Weather service decided that they could net a huge profit and charge a much heftier amount to attach monikers to these fierce forces of nature, based solely on the fact that there are only on average fifteen or so a season and that people would pay top dollar for the publicity it afforded the storm’s namesake. As they say, there’s no such thing as bad publicity (unless of course you happen to be a Nazi). So in 1970 the National Weather Service sold the naming rights of the first Hurricane to Yoko Ono, which has subsequently been blamed for the breakup of The Beatles, and to a lesser extent The Captain and Tennille.

Hurricane Yoko Ono In Action

Ever since it’s been totally trendly to attach your name to a violent storm in the hopes that it will increase awareness of particular projects-like forcing band breakups or telling your ex that you got engaged. Unfortunately, this is mostly a crapshoot, because not all tropical storms can be hurricanes. Such was the case with one of the biggest publicity failures that occurred when the “I Can Read Books” company ponied up big loot to name one of 1978’s storms “Amelia” in order to promote it’s children’s release Amelia Bedelia Helps Out. Well as the story goes, Tropical Storm Amelia only lasted two days and made minimal headlines. The book release was subsequently pushed back to 1979. Conversely, 2005’s Hurricane Rita was a devastating Category 5 Hurricane that made headlines nationwide, but could do little in the way of reviving Comedienne Rita Rudner’s career.

The Book At The Heart of The First Huge Hurricane Publicity Failure

There have been plenty of successful pairings such as 2004’s Hurricane Charley which caused Flowers For Algernon to re-enter the required reading list for many a junior high curriculum in the mid-Atlantic states and lest we not forget Hurricane Gloria, which dramatically drove up record sales for Laura Branigan’s 1982 single of the same name, albeit in 1985.

Whether or not you’re trying to drum up publicity for a presidential campaign or you simply want to see your name on the cover of a national newspaper that reads “(Your Name) Leaves Death and Destruction in it’s Wake”, you can rest assured that putting your name on a hurricane is the friendly and trendy way to get people talking about (your name here).

What’s My (Nick)Name?

Hello little Trendilinis. How are you doing today? What’s that, you don’t like when we call you our little Trendilinis? Oh, our bad. Look, we’ll make a deal with you; you tell us what you want to be called and from now on that’s what we’ll call you, because when it comes to reinventing yourself giving yourself a nickname is just about the trendliest thing you can do.

There’s no better way to conquer insecurity than to show everyone that names don’t hurt you…as long as they’re names that come from a pre-approved list. After all being called “Taz”or “The Rickster Scale” is heaps better than being called a “Midtown Douche” or “That Asshole In Ad Sales” even though they ostensibly carry the same meaning.

Give “The Rickster Scale” A Moment…He’s Busy

Once you come up with a suitable nickname that accurately portrays your character, “Carrot Top”, you have to be sure to get it into everyone’s head. There’s no better way to do that than to refer to yourself in the third person (another potentially trendly practice). For example, “The Mac Daddy is going to put his pants backwards” and “The Kid is going to his 58th birthday party.”

It’ll take a while for everyone to realize who you’re talking about, but once they’ve figured it out you’ll be on easy street. Even though most people will originally consider your new nickname a joke, turning them around is simple. All you have to do is start insisting on responding to that nickname and that nickname alone and they’ll be forced to employ it in everyday conversation, ultimately bending them to your will…and really what’s more trendly than getting people to bend to your will. Not much…And we should know best, The Trendliest isn’t our real name.

TV on The Radio

Greetings trendspiring actors and actresses! Have you had a major role on a made-for-TV movie, feature film, or perhaps just sat in the first row during a taping of “The Maury Povich show”? If you said yes, you’re probably all ready a huge or dim, flickering star. Well, now that you’ve shown your chops and had the chance to shine on the big screen, small screen, or as part of a live studio audience, isn’t about time you made the next logical leap in worldwide media domination?

Of course it is! And once you’ve gotten your fill of beautifying the world visually with your “acting”, there’s no trendlier move to cement your celebrity status than by adding some sweet, sweet music to your already impressive entertainment resume by releasing an album of mediocre to bad, upbeat pop songs.

Most people are unaware that being a media double threat is as old as the moving picture itself. Fred Ott, the star of Thomas Edison’s famous 1880’s short film of a man sneezing, parlayed his fame and recognition into a long and fruitful musical career as banjoist and lead vocalist for Booger Freddy and The Sneezers- Menlo Park, NJs premiere Bluegrass outfit and winner of seven Grammy awards.

Freddy of Freddy and The Sneezers in Action

While Freddy may have been the first to achieve such a feat, he left ample footprints for many on screen celebrities to follow in. In the 1950’s people like Doris Day and Frank Sinatra transitioned seamlessly back and forth between film and music, much like Will Smith does today. Perhaps the biggest success of the era was King Kong siren and scream queen Fay Wray who put out an entire 78 of shrieks that served as a musical precursor to punk rock.

Punk Pioneer Fay Wray

Today there’s an entirely new era of TV talent clamoring for record industry success. Super talents like Don Johnson, Heidi Montag, Hayden Panetierre, Lindsay Lohan, and Hillary Duff often leave their careers as superstars of the “Boobs tube” to pursue the secondary drama club dream of using space-aged “Studio Magic” and a talented slew of European songwriters to dutifully perform innocuous, meaningless songs in front of scores of shrieking teen fans who in the following years will wonder what they were thinking.

Ms. Montag: Scary/Talented

Either way, these stars will have made a boatload of money…and really what’s trendlier than earning heaps of money by exploiting kids who have yet to form personalities and don’t know any better than to buy your music because they envy you for no apparent reason…and then using that money to have three breast augmentation surgeries.

Keeping Up With The Jobses

Hey Trendly Spenders are you still enjoying the iPhone you bought way back in 1982, the one that ran on MS-DOS and used a dial up modem. Is your iPod Touch totally out of touch because it’s only running on Japanther OSX? We here at Trendliest think it’s time you got hop to the latest trend, constantly upgrading your personal belongings to keep up with each successive version released.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen there’s no better way to flaunt your massive quantities of disposable income than by sitting in front of your local computer store for fifteen days prior to the release of the new eToothbrush (the world’s first bluetooth toothbrush) so that you might be the first to buy the newer model that holds eight more KB of RAM and two more cubic milliliters of Crest than it’s previous incarnation that you bought just two months prior.

Looks Like It’s Time For An Upgrade

These days technology moves fast and if your new MP3 Player doesn’t have the ability to sync up with your tea kettle or if you can’t check the weather forecast by utilizing your toilet bowl’s main frame computer then you’re hopelessly behind the times and will undoubtedly be the laughing stock of your horrible friends.

The Waiting Is The Hardest Part

To paraphrase Tom Petty, “Waiting in line to upgrade all your gadgets is the hardest part.” However it is totally worth it and in no way makes you a techno-geek, at least according to “Techno Geek Monthly Magazine”. You’ll be just like the millions of other people queued up for the latest releases out of their fondness for long lines, their need to brag about technical capabilities to compensate for a lack of physical and mental advantages, as well as a genuine desire to engage in heated discussions about ethernet ports. Often times lasting relationships are formed solely on the basis of the latter during these waits because really what else are you going to do after talking about ethernet ports besides make out. As everyone knows, any situation that may lead to an upgrade of your love life will always take the trendly cake. Plus, being in a steamy relationship is much trendlier when you’re sending dirty text messages on the latest Blackberry.

Everybody Loves Cable

Hey you trendly little devils. Did that stint in the PHD program at your local community college not quite work out? Or perhaps your run as a pizza delivery boy was not all the movie Loverboy with Patrick Dempsey made it out to be? If you’re still looking to be all that you can be in the service industry, but haven’t yet found your niche, we here at the Trendliest have yet another friendly and trendy suggestion a fledgling careerist such as yourself can tackle with gusto. We think it’s about time you installed yourself on the trendly path to becoming a Cable Repairman.

Being a cable guy is more than just an opportunity to fulfill your sexual fantasies with bored housewives. It’s a job that allows you to “install new features in your customers unit”, “add quality components to their box”, and with cable’s new internet capabilities “upload large files from their hard drive” or gain a huge following by telling groundbreakingly stupid jokes about your white trash lifestyle. In a world that is increasingly reliant on cable television for entertainment, the Cable Repair Person is a god amongst service industry professionals, so much so that they are free to make their own suggested hours and make clients cater to their “I’ll get there when I get there” sense of duty all the while maintaining the freedom to take plentiful lunch breaks and employ liberal use of their time to run errands in the midst of what appears to be a busy schedule.

If This Van’s A Rockin’

Perhaps the crown jewel of the cable repair job is the Cable Repair van that when pimped out properly can resemble a seductive love den complete with a “If this van’s a rockin’ don’t come a knockin’” bumper sticker. It should be duly noted though that this “love den” should be kept out of site of eight to ten year old demon children curious about cable “hookups”,but more interested in the entrapment of unwitting repair technicians into career and perhaps life-ending molestation charges, which is decidedly unfriendly and untrendy. As long as you steer clear of that one obstacle you should be able to sustain this fruitful and trendly career path to the tops of the repair ranks. Who knows, you may even get to star in a movie about your life, just like famous cable repairmen Jim Carrey and Larry The Cable Guy. What are you waiting for? Git ‘r’ done!

Fascinasian

Greetings Trendly nation! Do you like animation? Do you like bizarre game shows? How about laughing at people who are different than you because they say things with an accent and don’t necessarily have a rudimentary understanding of your language? Well, then making light of Japanese culture is certainly a friendly trend that you can get on board with.

Yes, Americans have been enjoying Japanese culture since an unknown wall street banker enjoyed his first rolls of Sushi after an all night cocaine binge back in 1982. Prior to that, the only things about Japan Americans celebrated had something to do with a giant mushroom cloud or their fancy new CD player. Since then, major multi-national corporations and people all over the United States have caught on to the fact that Japanese people are amusing and that exploiting their culture is a relatively harmless practice.

Disembodied Japanese Heads Rank High On The Fun-o-meter

Companies like Six Flags with their “more flags more fun” ad campaign, The Food Network and FOX with their adaptations of Japanese game shows have done a wonderful job of co-opting the fun things about Japanese culture, such as their penchant for utilizing the appeal of shouting, disembodied heads; zapping all of the personality out of them by using them for monetary gain even though their quirkiness and excitability doesn’t necessarily translate into the culture of the particular country they inhabit.

Pikachu: “Collect Me, I Love You”

There have been a few cases, such as Pokemon and Nintendo, where Japanese culture has been translated successfully into American culture. However, both of those instances were undertaken with the guidance of Japanese businesses with the aim of exploiting the American population for their own commercial gain and VIP seating at Karaoke bars…which is not trendly. The last time America let that happen was with Belgians and the cartoon lovingly known as “The Smurfs” and we all know where that led.

The Smurfs’ Success Caused Irreparable Van Dammage

Things can only be friendly and trendly if we here in the United States co-opt other people’s culture. That way no one gets hurt and we can continue to be our blissfully ignorant selves, which the last time we checked has always been trendly.

The Accidental Terrorist

Odds are if you’re checking out this here site you’re on the hunt for something utterly friendly and trendy. You may also be wondering if there are trends you might have the good fortune to discover on your own. It would be easy for us to say no so that you might continue being absolutely dependant on us for finding out just what in the world is hop and hot, but the truth is there are some hot new fads you can stumble upon all by your self…the latest of which is being accidentally and irresponsibly labeled a “terrorist.”

While being accidentally labeled a terrorist goes as far back as the 1996 Olympics when Richard Jewell “bombed” a perfectly good Olympic venue all in the name of drawing the attention away from the fact that a Bulgarian, not an American participant captured three gold medals in weighlifting…the resurgence in the trend can be credited to the heinous attacks of September 11th. Since the government’s irresponsible handling of the events leading to an actual terrorist attack, they’ve stepped up efforts to compensate for the fact that they’re not doing enough for homeland security by making sure all bars have Toby Keith albums on their jukebox. Additionaly, the government has made efforts to raise public paranoia levels with the “if you see a brown person doing something, say something” slogan and their special hotline for reporting talkative cab drivers.

Rachael Ray Threatens Freedom With A Dynamite Coolatta

However, it’s not only poor brown people who’ve had the fortune of participating in this latest trend; Celebrities are also at the forefront of this fad. America’s Sweetest Pitchperson Rachael Ray was sent to Abu Ghraib after dressing up like Yasser Arafat in a Dunkin’ Donuts ad where she was then subject to the trendly practice of waterboarding. Even Presidential frontrunner Barack Obama and his wife aren’t immune to trendliness. The two were placed under heavy scrutiny after engaging in the “Al Qaeda Fist Bump” after a lively speech about overthrowing the current Republican regime.

The Friction from Said Fist Bump Usually Creates Explosions of Epic Proportions

Don’t be trend-orists…If the two most popular people in the greatest nation in the world are getting their accidental terrorism on…what are you waiting for? Shouldn’t you be arousing suspicion by leaving a suspicious package on the train that just so happens to look like your pocket book or maybe letting your oven burner run a bit before lighting a match to create a huge gas explosion in your house? Either of those would be da bomb, and totally trendly ways to arouse suspicion that you are in fact a terrorist.

The Stamp of Approval

Hey trend-collectors, Are you looking for a new hobby you can really STICK to without it costing you an arm and a leg? Well, you can cross out gun collecting since a mistake might actually cost you a few brain and skull fragments; baseball cards are right out of the question because of the potential for nasty paper cuts. If you really want an activity that gives you the official trendliest STAMP of approval, why not take up philately…or in layman’s terms: Stamp Collecting!

A Hunka, Hunka Burning Postal Love

Being a successful stamp collector can be a rewarding, yet difficult undertaking. You have many friends in your quest to acquire as many stamps as possible. However, there is no greater ally or enemy than the post office. The post office can be both a source of delight and dastardly doom. Not only does this national “by land, sea, or air, in sickness and health, in good times and bad, ’til death do us part” letter couriering behemoth have the ability to aid you in acquiring stamps by issuing rare images of Fat Elvis on postal currency, but on the flipside they may also ask, nay demand you use that cherished Fat Elvis image should you feel the need to pay your bills or tell your friend working at the General Mills Cereal Factory in Battle Creek, Michigan that you miss them in a lengthy four paged soul confession.While the post office can certainly giveth and taketh away, they can also giveth again if other stamp enthusiasts should happen to feel compelled to use the post office to show you about their latest rare stamp finds by including them as postage.

Food Stamps: Now Available in Scratch ‘n’ Sniff!

However, if the romance of the relatively archaic institution of snail mail doesn’t seem to pique your interest in the hobby, there are other ways of collecting stamps. For those who’d like to go out and see the world you can pursue a hobby of collecting passport stamps in lands as distant as Peru or Persia. Or if you’re more of a homebody, you can avoid all of that travelling and effort by being gainfully unemployed and and sitting at home watching “The Maury Povich Show”, while collecting food stamps. While the latter isn’t necessarily adventurous it’s certainly friendly and trendy in that it allows you to find out once in for all whether or not all of those contestants are lying about being a certain baby’s daddy.